


by any other name

by thecatonlyknows



Category: Jessica Jones (TV)
Genre: Attempted rape recovery, Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Pre-Canon, Rape Recovery, What Did You Expect, i mean this is jessica jones, kilgrave appears in flashbacks only
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-09
Updated: 2017-09-09
Packaged: 2018-12-25 13:29:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12036882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecatonlyknows/pseuds/thecatonlyknows
Summary: Jessica escapes Kilgrave. It doesn't get any easier after that.





	by any other name

**Author's Note:**

> So this is an old drabble I've had on my computer for ages and figured I would finally post. It doesn't feel quite finished, but I also don't think I'm coming back to it, so...yeah.
> 
> Trigger warning for past rape, alcoholism and suicidal thoughts.

At first she walks away. It’s a slow, ungraceful shamble, but it’s moving. It’s walking _away_. Of course then she trips over the curb, falls, distantly registers the pain when her raw palms scrape across the pavement. ( _That was clumsy, Jessica, now apologize—_ )

She gets back up. She feels blank, light-headed, the world at once a million miles away and pressing in too close to fill her lungs. She doesn’t feel anything.

After a while she starts running. The fur coat is heavy and thick and she sweats under its weight, cold and sticky like the blood drying on her hands. She wants to take it off, throw it away, set it on fire and watch while it burns. ( _Jessica, don’t just stand there, get dressed—_ ) She doesn’t. She keeps running. Time and distance. The words come to her slowly at first, blurry and filtered, like sunlight through glazed glass. Then she says them again inside her head.

Time and distance. That was the plan. Get away to get distance, to get time, to _get away_ —fuck, fuck, was that real, _did that happen_ —is he—fuck, get away, _get away_ —time and distance, time and distance, time and _motherfucking_ distance—

She curls up behind a dumpster when she can’t run any longer. Puts her back against the filthy brick wall, draws her legs up to her chest and rests her forehead against the cool metal. Her breathing is harsh and ragged and someone could hear it, _he could hear_ —time and distance, time and motherfucking distance—and she digs her fingers into her calves hard enough to bruise and forces herself to inhale _slowly_ , one two three four, exhale _slowly_ , one two three four, one two three. Four. ( _Be quiet, Jessica, there’s a good girl—_ )

She’s quiet. She sits there, perfectly still, listening to the sirens in the distance. She can’t stop shivering.

* * *

What Jessica has is a ruined fur coat, an ugly diamond necklace and fifty-three dollars in cash shoved into her back pocket. She tosses the coat, pawns the necklace and counts the cash six times. It’s enough to get her a room in a skanky-ass motel so cheap she’s pretty sure the walls are actually made of cardboard.

The clerk doesn’t give her scraped hands a second glance, which is good because she’s still shivering as she passes over the money. When he asks for a name she freezes at first, her breath coming fast and shallow. “J-Jane,” she finally manages. “Jane…Campbell.” He enters it without comment.

She hasn’t slept in—how long? Fuck, she doesn’t know how long it’s been—how long ago was the last command, when was it—she’s lost track, she’s lost fucking track like the dumb piece of shit she is, the command was at—3:14 AM, her mind supplies automatically—which means it’s been, shit, what time is it _now?_

Her voice is suddenly urgent. “What time is it?”

The clerk glances at his wrist, looking bored. “Six.”

Six in the evening. Fifteen hours and twenty-two minutes. It’s enough. It’s goddamned enough, it has to be. Her hands shake so badly she almost drops the room key when it’s handed to her. The clerk still looks bored.

The first thing Jessica does is search the room. She opens the closet, looks in the bathroom, even checks under the bed like a goddamned asshole. No one’s there. So she takes a shower. As she sheds her clothes she glances nervously away from the mirror, but not in time to avoid seeing a pale, dirty woman do the same. There’s a few blank seconds without recognition before she realizes the reflection is hers. ( _Smile, Jessica—_ ) For some reason she has to fight back the sudden, violent urge to laugh.

What she has is fifteen hours and twenty-two minutes, a name she can’t stand to hear and a scream buried somewhere at the back of her throat. She can feel it scratching to get out.

* * *

( _Jessica, open your eyes,_ he says softly, and she feels his fingers brush across her cheek—)

She wakes up all at once and holds herself intensely still, listening, pressing her lips together so hard they tremble. She can’t make a sound, he could hear it and know—know where she is, know she’s not really asleep, she’s just pretending so that he—

She breathes out slowly, one two three four, and _listens_. The motel is silent around her. The sheets smell faintly of mold. The air is warm and muggy, weighing her down. Infintesimally, she shifts under the covers, keeping her face slack. He’s dead, she thinks.

He’s dead, he’s dead. You saw him die, dumbass. He isn’t here. He’s dead.

But only after ten minutes have passed without hearing anything does she allow herself to sit up and stumble out of bed.

Time and distance. Time and motherfucking distance. How long has it been? She looks automatically at the clock. 1:25 AM. Twenty-two hours and thirty-nine minutes since the last command. It’s enough time, it has to be enough. But what about the distance? She’s still in the same fucking city for Chrissake, what is she doing here trying to hide when she has to _run_ —

No. She saw him die. She saw him die, right? That was real. It has to be fucking real.

What if it’s not real?

* * *

She waits a day, two days, a week. He doesn’t come. She doesn’t stay in one place, she can’t, it isn’t safe. So she holes up in one shitty little motel after another and counts the hours obsessively, counts her breaths, counts the cockroaches on the cardboard walls. One, two, three. Four. She thinks she might be going mad.

( _Jessica—_ )

Going? Hah.

* * *

“Oh my God, _Jessica?_ ”

“Hi, Trish,” she says. Croaks is more like it. Her throat feels raspy and unused. ( _Be quiet, Jessica—_ ) Makes sense. It’s been a week, one day and nineteen hours since she held a conversation longer than five words.

Trish takes one glance at her face and pushes the door open wide. “Get in here, you jerk, what _happened?_ ” She reaches out to grab Jessica’s arm. “I was worried—“ Jessica flinches back, and Trish stops, looking at her strangely. “Jessica?”

“Sorry,” she says, “Sorry, I—“ Something is pressing on her throat, keeping the words trapped inside. She swallows, and it hurts.

She watches Trish let her arm drop to her side. “Jessica, what’s wrong?” Her light clear eyes dart between Jessica’s unwashed clothes, her face, the scabs on her hands. She’s been picking at them and they’re starting to bleed again.

“Sorry,” Jessica chokes out. Her shoulders are starting to shake. “I’m sorry, I—“

For a moment Trish’s expression twists. Then it settles into the fixed, careful lines Jessica remembers from their childhood, the aftermath of a hundred screaming fights with her mother. “Come inside,” ( _Come inside, Jessica—_ ) but there’s a question in her voice, and it lets Jessica shove down the panic that wants to bubble to the surface at the words. Trish takes a step back, leaving the doorway clear, and Jessica walks inside without pausing for a deep breath because she doesn’t have time for that shit, okay?

Trish gets her a glass of water.

When Jessica starts crying, it’s a relief the same way it’s a relief in movies when the serial killer stops skulking around the shadows and finally pops up on-screen to start murdering the main cast. As in, it’s a fucking horror show, but at least the wait is over.

Trish only slips up and tries to touch her once. She yanks her hand back when Jessica does a ridiculous full-body twitch and runs it through her own hair instead, staring up at the ceiling so she doesn’t have to look at Jessica’s stupid fucking face. “Sorry,” Trish says. Her voice catches, and Jessica abruptly wants to die.

She wonders if the apartment has any plastic bags she could put over her head, hide her face and smother herself at the same time. Two birds, one stone, etcetera. Probably not. Last she heard Trish had gone full hippie and started on the organic-kale-and-reusable-grocery-bag diet. Saving the whales and all that shit. Jessica guesses they deserve it more than her.

* * *

( _Hold still, Jessica, let me look at you,_ as he threads his fingers through her hair and leans in and his breath is hot and damp against her skin—)

When she wakes up she’s holding herself utterly motionless, every muscle clenched, straining so hard to stay still that she’s quivering all over with tension. Relax, she has to relax or he’ll know she’s awake and he’ll—breathe out, one two three four, breathe in, one two three four—relax, Jesus fucking Christ just _relax_ or—

So she does. Slowly, painstakingly, the tension leeches from her body. She waits and listens for ten full minutes before she moves. Just like the last time and the time before that. And the time before that and the time before that.

Trish’s place, she reminds herself. She’s at Trish’s place, and he isn’t coming, because he’s dead. He has to be dead. He _is_ dead.

Then she gets up. She goes to the bathroom first, splashes some water on her face, looks up to stare at the pallid reflection in the mirror. The woman there is wasted, hollow-cheeked, eyes circled with deep purple bags and hair hanging lankly to her shoulders. She hasn’t showered in days. There’s no trace of recognition in that blank expression, nothing familiar in the flat line of her lips or the curve of her nose. She doesn’t know this woman. She doesn’t want to know her.

There’s a couple bottles of pills on the top cabinet shelf. Prescription sleeping meds. Trish had pulled a few strings to get something that could let Jessica sleep through the night besides her body weight in alcohol, not that the alcohol was letting her sleep through many nights either. Helped, though. The meds knocked her out but made the nightmares worse, except for the blue pills which, it turned out, didn’t knock her out but also made the nightmares worse. That had been a fun night.

Jessica grabs the biggest bottle and glances skeptically at the label. It’s more than half-full of the little white pills, the strongest ones. If she took them all in one go it would probably be enough. Wash them down with some whiskey, go to sleep and never wake up. People were always going on about how death was where you finally got to rest, the great big nap in the sky. As long as you didn’t dream while you were dead she was all for it. Problem was there was no way to know in advance.

Jessica imagines dying and spending eternity dreaming of her name on his lips. ( _Jessica—_ ) She puts the bottle back on the shelf.

* * *

That morning, Jessica is already up and making coffee when Trish walks into the kitchen. “Hey,” Trish says, watching without comment as Jessica slides a mug to her across the counter and pours a generous dollop of whiskey into her own. “You’re up early.”

“Late,” Jessica corrects, and takes a gulp of coffee. It burns her tongue going down.

Trish frowns. “The sleeping pills didn’t help?”

“I flushed them down the toilet, so.” Jessica shrugs. “Hey, Trish?” Before Trish can answer her, she sets down the mug, crosses the room, and wraps her arms around the other woman in a fierce hug. Trish starts a little in surprise. Then she makes a soft, broken sound and returns the embrace. “Hi,” Jessica mutters, burying her face in Trish’s neck and breathing in. She smells like Trish, sleep and warmth and high-end shampoo. She smells like home.

“Hi,” Trish says back, with a shaky little laugh. “Hi, you.” She tightens her hold around Jessica, but it’s alright, because it’s Trish’s hands and Trish’s hold and Trish’s hair tickling her nose, and there’s nothing in the whole goddamned world that could ever feel less like him, nothing at all.

* * *

The whiskey bottle is a comforting weight in her lap. Jessica wraps her fingers around the neck and stares down at it, avoiding Trish’s gaze. “Maybe I should change my name.”

It’s been two weeks, six days and seven hours since his last command. It’s been three days since she last left Trish’s apartment. Four days ago, Trish convinced Jessica to make a trip with her to some outlet store to buy herself new clothes. A couple tank tops and a pair of jeans that mostly fit, that was the plan. Ten minutes after going inside Jessica started hyperventilating, nearly took out a wall and knocked down three stands of coats and two people when she ran for the door.

Some guy had been talking in a British accent. Fucking pathetic. Jessica, that is, not the guy. Trish hasn’t suggested any more trips since.

There’s a long, cautious pause before Trish replies. It kind of makes Jessica want to throw something. Not the whiskey, though, she needs that. “Okay.” Trish takes a sip of her own drink—water. There’s another glass of it on the coffee table by Jessica’s knee, where Trish had tactfully set it earlier. It’s still untouched. “If you want to. Why?”

Once Jessica would have said something witty in response, or at least moderately smartass. Today she doesn’t have the energy, so she shrugs. ( _Jessica—_ ) “Something to do.”

“Okay,” Trish says again. “Change it to what?” Her voice turns brassy with forced humor. “Fair warning, if you say Patsy I’m kicking you off that couch.” She’s smiling the glossy smile she puts on billboards and the sides of buses, the one she gives to fans and hobos and assholes in nice suits alike. It’s a lot more than Jessica deserves. At least the smile means a break from the soft looks, the concern, the fucking _heartbreak_ that keeps creeping into her eyes when she thinks Jessica can’t see.

She wants to be at the furthest geographical point on the globe from here but she also wants to breathe, and sometimes breathing gets hard when Trish isn’t in her line of sight. It’s a problem. Well, it can take a goddamned number, Jessica’s got more than one of those.

“Not Patsy,” she says, and pours some whiskey down her throat. It helps with the scream still stuck in there. Makes the edges less sharp.

“Good call.” Trish cocks her head, pretending to think. “I always liked April for a girl.”

Jessica gives her a flat look. “I’m not naming myself after the second-worst month of the year.”

“What’s the first-worst?”

“Actually, also April.”

Trish laughs a little. “Okay, so not April. May? June?”

“How about no months of the year, let’s do that.”

“Shannon,” Trish says without missing a beat. “Alex. Lucia. Becky.”

“Becky?” Jessica repeats. “Seriously? Becky?”

“I knew a Becky once. She had a great right hook.”

“She’d have to, with a name like Becky.”

“Emmeline? Lavender? Natasha?”

“Now you’re not even trying.”

“Oh hey, I know, how about Jewel?”

Trish’s eyes are teasing, crinkled in a laugh, when her face suddenly changes and her mouth snaps shut. The smile slips away like it was never there. “Shit. Jessica, I’m sorry—“

“Don’t—“ Jessica cuts her off with a curt sideways slash of her hand. “Just don’t, okay?” Every time Trish apologizes to her she feels like vomiting. The flicker of laughter that briefly warmed her insides snuffs out, replaced by a familiar nausea.

“Jessica…”

“No,” Jessica says dully, taking a long swig from the bottle. “That’s the one I’m getting rid of, remember?”

Trish is silent for a long moment. "I think you should give that therapist at least one try," she finally tells her. The words are careful and soft and sad.

"I'll think about it," Jessica says, and takes another drink.


End file.
